


What do you get out of it?

by A Kiss of Fire (TigerDragon), Bright_Elen



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 21:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10289804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/A%20Kiss%20of%20Fire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: Jyn is great at noticing some things. Others, she needs some help figuring out.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Unorthodox Modifications](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9689687) by [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen). 



> TigerDragon is the wife-wife team of Tiger (Bright_Elen) and Dragon (A Kiss of Fire). All Jyn awesomeness is credited to Dragon.

Jyn Erso, hair still damp even in the dry air the humidity extractors are forcing on the Yavin IV base, hands at her hips, eyes slightly dilated. Aggressive. Ninety-six percent likelihood she desires conflict. Thirty-eight percent she knows how she wants it to end. 

She repeats herself, softer but with a sharper hiss on each syllable. “I said ‘what do you get out of it?’”

Kaytoo pauses in his diagnostic on the stolen cargo ship. No one’s ever asked him that question before. 

“The Rebellion?” 

“Sure.” The edge of her mouth curls up, hard and almost laughing. “The Rebellion. Let’s say it wins and sweeps down the Empire in one righteous blow and brings back the good old days of the Republic that weren’t. You’re still you. None of these people are going to do you any favors. Unless Captain Andor,” she hisses his name like she wants to cut it on her teeth, “was lying about how he fixed your programming, you could just leave. So what do you get out of it?”

“I could indeed leave,” Kaytoo says. “Cassian himself has encouraged me to do that four times.” Once immediately after they’d escaped the Imperial base where the spy had reprogrammed him, twice during missions gone bad, and once the day after Kaytoo had offered to erase his memory of the night before. The likelihood of him doing it again approaches one hundred percent, given enough time.

Jyn’s arms come up, fold across her chest. The probability that this confrontation will become physical declines to single whole digits. “But you don’t.”

“Obviously.” Kaytoo only lets it sit for two seconds before continuing. She did stand between him and live blasters, after all. “It is a directive I choose. Being on my own would increase the likelihood of being memory-wiped exponentially, and there aren’t any objectives elsewhere worth the risk.” 

“Bantha shit.” She snaps forward a couple of steps, forcing her to crane her neck to keep looking at his face, but she doesn’t back up. “It’s a big galaxy, even for an ex-Imp droid. There’s a lot of places you’re less likely to get blown up, shot or mangled, so self-preservation doesn’t cut it. Yeah, sure, you’re slightly more likely to get your memory wiped out there, but you’re a lot less likely to wind up in pieces. You don’t have to tell me, fine, but don’t feed me static. Choose why?”

Kaytoo looks down at her, remembers the negligible weight of her as he threw her to the ground at their first meeting. The air driven from her lungs and stunned expression had been gratifying then, but even as she's getting closer to his most vulnerable, vital secret, he doesn’t want to do that again.

It hasn’t even been ten seconds when she pushes the air out between her teeth and says “Even thinking with the hormones you don’t have, there wasn’t ever anybody I’d have chased into an occupied city where everybody wanted to shoot me just to stay next to.”

Or, apparently, has already found his secret. “Ah.” 

Her mouth twitches again. “You don’t even have... you know. It isn’t the sex, right? But you stay anyway. Keep doing this. It didn’t seem like it could just be for him.”

“It’s absolutely the sex,” Kaytoo says, deadpan. 

Both Jyn’s eyebrows lift, and she rocks back on the heels of her boots.

“Just kidding.”

Her mouth settles back into a crooked line and she cocks her head. “I bet the smouldering childhood rage is a lot less fun than it looks.”

“It is, though mostly because he keeps it bottled up,” Kaytoo finds himself complaining. “It’s really absurd that I’m the more emotionally available one in the relationship.” 

“There was a girl once on some dirtball I don’t even remember the name of who I actually caught sneaking out the window while I was getting my boots on to ghost. We had a good laugh.” Jyn shakes her head, finally looking away from him, and wanders over to rest her hand on the hull of the ship next to him. “Guess you can always find somebody worse at things than you if you look hard enough.”

“It’s a big galaxy,” Kaytoo agrees. Her aggression has dimmed, leaving something else. Her fingers slide over the metal slow, picking out small imperfections where heat or patched damage have left their mark on the metal.

“He is...essential. To me,” he finally says. “And the Rebellion is essential to him. So here I am.” Shrugs, as if it were that simple. Because it is that simple.

“It has to be destroyed.” Jyn’s voice is a whisper. “The Death Star. It’s... it just has to be. But my mother died, and Saw, and my father. So here I am. All I want to do is get away from it and I can’t, because that  _ thing _ is out there. Waiting. How do you live with it?”

“Death is one hundred percent likely for all sentient beings,” Kaytoo says.

She turns and looks up at him again, lip quirking with gallows laughter she doesn’t voice. “Wrong coordinates. Dying is just dying. I mean how do you live with being trapped?”

Jyn is like a nek, gnawing the conversation down to the bone. Kaytoo isn’t sure whether he’s more annoyed or more looking forward to seeing her really fuck up the Empire’s day.

“Being limited is also one hundred percent likely. I choose these limitations because they are superior to others.” He pauses. “For example, the sex.” 

Now she does start to laugh. “I have to go try to convince a bunch of stuffed-shirt rebels they should believe me about that damned thing. Whatever happens, I have a feeling you’re going to be busy afterward. So maybe you ought to grab some of that superiority while you can get it - it has to be more fun than this meeting, right? I’ll think...” her expression twitches, and she has to choke around fresh laughter before she continues, “I will not at all think of you while I’m doing it, actually, but you know what I mean.”

“It would be funny if you did,” Kaytoo points out.

“I don’t think convulsive laughter would help get my point across.”

Kaytoo doesn’t think anything will get her point across to some of the generals, but he doesn’t tell her that.

“Good luck, Jyn Erso.”


End file.
